That's hilarious, but also sad - the way they keep desecrating the title.

They've deluded themselves into thinking QC would blow up and get a huge influx of all kinds of new players. They've disrespected oldtimers, essentially saying 'Pfft, we don't need you'.
Now that it's a flop, they are literally begging the few dozen or few hundred of you: 'come and play our game... it's good... please?' That's a new level of patheticness even from them.

I would've not objected to QC succeeding. Unfortunately, all of this was very easy to predict. They got the funding to pay for an engine and creating various assets. But putting it together into a high quality game that would break into the mainstream and compete with other popular titles, is not something they are capable of doing.
On the other hand though, they've changed things up just enough that it really isn't Quake anymore, and doesn't appeal to the purist, vanilla crowd either.
Which begs the question: who was this game made for, who did they have in mind as a target audience, if any?

One thing's for certain: I wouldn't want to trade places with Timmy, once the Bethesda suits inevitably show up for a little sit-down.

I'm disappointed with where id has taken Quake beginning with the gameplay changes in QL. Fuck all that chain jumping, auto hopping, double jumping nonsense. They redid all of that crap in QC plus added the champions. Even if the game ran great it's just not very fun to play.

I'm disappointed with where id has taken Quake beginning with the gameplay changes in QL. Fuck all that chain jumping, auto hopping, double jumping nonsense. They redid all of that crap in QC plus added the champions. Even if the game ran great it's just not very fun to play.

That's almost less offensive than BFMG. Like half of the classic maps are ruined by having a BFMG somewhere that used to have a logical weapon placement: RJ up the jump pad from Quad to Mega on demonkeep. All from the same idiotic change spree though..

The Dreamhack Winter QC matches were kind of watchable, but no plasma and no nades in QC? Unbelievable.

Yup - couldn't agree more. People need to remember it started back then - in 2014. All those crappy changes that were literally forced upon us that we all said we didn't want but they gave us anyway.
Loadouts! Item Timers, Universal Ammo, HMG, Auto-Hop,
re-arranging items on classic maps to accommodate this stuff - (and remember half the maps went missing as well?) - they ruined FFA and other game-types like FreezeTag - a lot of old players left and never came back.
(LG change to 6 is debatable for some)

Then the worst of the worst - those bloody announcers!
3 attempts - THREE ATTEMPTS! (and at least 2 in this new version) None as good as Xian (install from Steam Workshop)

They took Xian away so they could add 'head-shot' (which we don't have in-game) and other nonsense like 'Perforated!' - why would you be 'perforated'? (is this how they make tea-bags?) 'Scrambled' maybe 'Dispersed' but surely not perforated.

Then in the end, they were forced to reverse it all and at least give us options to turn things off.
They left it in a mess though as all that stuff is still on by default..
and can anyone explain 'Factories' to me??

I got a ban in the Quake Live Forums at the time for simply saying this -

We made this game for you guys ! A game which has nothing to do with your favourite game, plays like shit sounds like shit and has worse net code than a 20 years old game, with classes and other kind of bullshit, a game marketed as "team game" when the main focus is "duel" (which is completely fucked up of a game mode in qc), we made this 120Hz™ (sic) game for you so you could not run it smoothly even with high end gaming computers and get constant freezes and shits, this game where the time between launching the game and actually playing is 15 minutes thanks to our super awesome cutscene animation technologies and lightning fast loading times. So
STOP
PLAYING
QUAKE
LIVE !
WE MADE THIS FOR YOU !

The success or failure of QC has nothing to do with champions.
Making QC a Q3 with modern graphics would have changed absolutely nothing.

Kids today do not want to play arena shooters, period.

People here on ESR might want to open their eyes to this fact, instead of blaming id for everything.
Without having read everybody's posts here about QC, I'd be willing to wager the house, dog and wife that even if id had taken all you geniuses' advice, and implemented it perfectly (according to your wishes) into QC, QC would still be a miserable failure. Why?
Because kids today do not want to play arena shooters, period.

Sure, id could've chosen to cater exclusively to you miserable, old farts. But that would still only mean about 200 daily players in a game that took millions[?] to develop and promote.

So yeah, maybe not the best choice to suck dick on the ESR crowd either. You bunch give id so much shit, I'm amazed they haven't dropped the Quake franchise entirely, out of spite for you people.

I'll tell you where id went wrong re. QC:
They should have copied either Overwatch, CS:GO or PUBG 1:1, and not listen to a single word that you bitter, ego-centric, venom-spewing Quake players had to say.

Look what Epic have done? They have taken a massive dump in the faces of everyone that loved UT; ditched the development of UT4 (they haven't admitted to it publicly yet; but they will eventually admit it) and have moved the few devs working on UT4 over to Fortnite. Fortnite is currently having big success by copying PUBG 1:1.
Is it ethical? Not really. Does this please me and everyone that loved UT? No; it makes me sad.
But I can't change the fact that... kids today do not want to play arena shooters, period.

Wake up, ESR!! It's 2017. Its a different world, where kids today do not want to play arena shooters, period.

Arena Shooter is a stupid word that nobody ever said or had heard of 5 years ago. People play multiplayer games if the game is good which this game isnt. Thats the problem.

ID soft owns the code to all the IDtech engines. IDtech engine IS QUAKE. They could of simply taken the doom3 engine which already includes strafe jumping, custom maps, server browser and just increased its polygon count. Re-worked the gameplay with different characters and abilities. That would not have taken a large budget to achieve.

Then you would have a game with solid graphics, solid netcode, server browser, custom maps etc. Literally a team of 4 or 5 devs could have pulled that off.

Instead they give us this crap engine filled with bugs, this stupid matchmaking that dosent work, cant shuffle teams, wait all day on the menu screen and get sent back to it after and anybody wonders why people say this game is crap and dont play it.

"Arena shooter" is not the problem here. Total miss-execution of everything they touch is the problem.

Quakers want to play Quake. Not some kind of strange Overwatch ripoff that is riddled with poor performance. Some people will complain about anything but the complaints about Quake Champions are valid. I don't care for Overwatch but at least it's well made. What is the point of making Quake like Overwatch? Are they just trying to coast on the success of another game? The concept of Overwatch isn't even new. Team Fortress did it decades ago. I'm not going to pretend to know what kids want to play but people who like Quake want to play Quake. I think unfortunately the franchise can't be saved. Diehard fans are fine playing previous titles. Playerbase is too nasty and game can be too hard to attract casual fans. I don't know. The latest Doom in comparison was a smashing success. Quake Champions unfortunately seems all over the place and the poor performance is a deal breaker for anyone.

The thing is, you think of this like some stock holder whos main concern is making money from this game, which means going big and becoming a mainstream title everyone plays. Sure go the china route and make h1/pubg #43923, maybe thats reliable $$.

But I only care about a game I can enjoy, I don't need the game to go mainstream with hundreds of thousands of players to have fun. If kids don't enjoy it thats actually kind of a bonus lol (like EVE online dead geme but average age is like 32+).

If they would make a pubg copy and called it quake champions, sure the masses would perhaps enjoy it but what the fuck do I or anyone who wanna play quake gain from that? :D

Everyone copying working models is perhaps great for the stock holders but it's AIDS for gamers.

hey you are very stupid because tim is litterally BEGGING us old farts to play his game now. Now that the hype weared off and people moved on he would like to have a stable committed playerbase.

we all knew from the start that young kids (13-17 year olds) dont want to play arena shooters, idk in where you all got the idea that QC could have a BIG playerbase? either they make a new quake for max 500 players or they waste their money for NOBODY.

i can understand they want a lot of player and they want their game to be a hit, but then why would you make it a quake game??
its like opening a restaurant calling it BEFFY STEAKHOUSE and then offering vegetarian food.

people at id software are a bunch of low iq monkeys.
the people in charge should fire all those mouthbreathers.

What worries me about QC is that it has inner design and business-side issues, that are not simple to fix. Without a project reboot it's going to be all meaningless updates, aimed to please the current maybe 1000 players and lower by the day.

That's an upper management decision. The id soft employees aren't at fault on this Quake.

For example, why would a hardcore QL player move to a new Quake, if the game runs awfully for everybody (especially when performance is of the essence in a F2P game), it takes him 10 mins to start playing (and another 10 after each map), gets twice more ping, visibility is non-existent, the game is just an incoherent mess of everything (gameplay and even stylistically. Who are you appealing to?), the offered gametypes belong in 1996 (nothing new to do. The idea of playing new games is to do new stuff), and on top of that the player already prefers the classic Q3 gameplay and the plethora of content.

Tim, if you read this Kappa, people uninstall a F2P game after three minutes of queueing. The game seems dead or badly done. In QC, it's already three minutes in the loading game phase and the plethora of intermissions after finding a match, and even after the match. Those alone leave a bad taste of mouth and matter way more than adding a new duel map, that will only be seen by the 200 remaining duelers. For reference, in PUBG it takes 2 mins of waiting for 30 mins of gameplay, while in QC it's 10 mins for each 10 mins (30 for 30). In QL, it used to be at most 1 min per map.

I have shown QC to many of my old school Quake friends, and nobody has liked it so far. Problem is though, they are not going to give it a second try if the only improvement is adding a map, rather than fixing the core issues. They'll continue in OW (10 times more polished) and PUBG (10 times more creative).

The time it takes from clicking on the QC icon on your desktop to actually playing QC takes waaaaaaaaaaay too long.

Comparing it to a game from 1999 (UT99), it takes me about 5 seconds before I'm playing.
QC takes just way too much time for the same. It has put me off lots of times. I end up booting up QL instead, which also is quite slow at doing the same thing that it takes UT99 to do in 5 seconds. Still a lot faster than QC, though.

This is one of main problems: 20 secs after launch ql you are already playing in a server, in qc you are still in the first loading screen, and it will take 1-2 mins more + 1 min warmup.
And the engine is a mess, compared to qc ql netcode is like playing on lan lol

yes, duel lacks depth, but i am still having fun playing it casually against friends. public tdm is better than it has ever been imho. i dont really play anything else but i have about 100h of playtime and im still enjoying it a lot. especially mastering the different movement mechanics.
once the hitbox issues are gone we will be able to get reliable hits and champs will have bigger stacks. its just going to get better. and when ranked matchmaking is introduced with a new duel format, i am only going to play more.
helps that the game now actually runs with at a stable 100fps for me on a 3year old pc and i can find matches in under 3 minutes. i understand that this is not the case for everybody

but the absence of progress in new features and solving old problems, together with the directions they take and having each patch being worse than the previous, throws you off

and is always the same for me. the first days of each patch, I am like strenx, "what is dis? look at dis". then I start getting used to all new shit that they have introduced (like removing lg) and play with what I have been given. when I reach a state where I have accepted it for what it is and start to enjoy, they release a new patch and the circle repeats

key-phrase "casually against friends"
if you want a casual expirience to share with your friends, then there are much much better casual quality games out there.. if that is what you are after.

the people that dont like it simply expect quality and consistency.
after all this is NOT a JOB, this is where i spend some of my free time, so of its shit why should i waste my time here? when time is tje only luxury :)

I think I have to agree with Nukm. The game is making progress from a technical standpoint and if given time it will likely turn out good. Sure there are a lot of features missing like more maps, modes and so on, mainly a good team mode which would cater to both beginners and seasoned players. The biggest reason I don't play the game is visibility, I know the Quake colour palette has always been brownish but atleast we've had team colours and bright skins to differentiate enemies from teammates and backgrounds. At the start of the project we, the so called old/seasoned players were promised many things, classical mode, ctf and so on... This never happend and I think a lot of ppl here felt a bit betrayed. Tim is not the ideal spokes person for a new Quake, most of the times he comes of as a blabbering salesman, speaking of things he doesn't fully comprehend. He could very well be a good project manager but he shouldn't promote games.

It's not Quake right now, It's just a joke with abillities and rounds, and intensive chaotic shit(Sacrifice). Completely feels like non Quake game or some very soft(like an crap) version of Quake. Whatever. Fuck it.

Yeah cause saying people who don't need to point out they have friends of different race are the ones who judge people based on ethnicity is a good defense. Esdf might be a troll and a baiter but he's absolutely got a poinf.

Yeah apparently when you mention anything to do with race you're a racist. Diversity/Equality somewhat semantics if you look at it from that point of view. esdf just pretty much spewed a bunch of dumb shit which had no correlation to what I originally said. Oh well.

Maybe because you did nothing to achieve it and trying to piggyback on success of other people. Sounds quite unimpressive to me, like being proud of having rich parents. Notice the difference between being proud of someone and being proud to be someone.

I didn't say I'm offended, just unimpressed and put off by such statements. I've been raised to judge people by their actions and accomplishments rather than their background or appearance and I agree with that.

Then I can agree with you on that too, like many have said in the past that you can't judge a book by it's cover.

Fortunately or unfortunately really, the world doesn't really work like that, I can be dressed like a hobo and be a millionaire and people would look at me as if I'm the scum of society without being slightly inclined to hear the story behind it.

However, I can look all professional as if I've "Got my shit together." Yet people would pass you by without also wanting to know you, so we've all go a story of some sorts to tell, it's that people don't take the time to listen and get to know anyone anymore.

Then again, words written are completely different to words written followed by action.

Because you were implying some racist bullshit to begin with that had absolutely nothing to do with any of my posts.

Hell, I could probably give you a whole consensus of all the different types of races/creeds of friends that I do have, however then I'd be a MASSIVE RACIST PRICK or whatever else you'd like to label me as.

It seems as if you like to label people randomly though, which is okay, we all have different ways of approaching certain scenarios, so if it works for you, awesome.

Na, there's a difference between getting worked up and defending yourself when the accuser is just being a little child when they clearly admitted in the first place that they have no idea what has happened outside of their own little town, but because white people live in Africa, they're racist haha. Man, that is the funniest shit I've actually come across in my life.

You need to get a clue about what's happening in the world by actually going out and experiencing it, instead of sitting on the internet, developing some soft shit ideology about people and the world in general.

Maybe you get off by starting arguments or poor attempts at trolling others, I dunno. Whatever floats your boat. I won't judge you on your kinks mate.

"we made this game for you!" (C) Tim
What a joke... you made this game for casualtys but not for quake players!
You added everything we dont want (champions, new duel system, sacrifize) and removed things which were approved over the time (custom maps, mods, gtv and and and).

So we can play a good game (ql) or a bad game (qc)... a very hard choice.

I don't think there is enough content or presentation for value, and it's obviously been a while. Maybe there can be a writeup with quotes from the entire session, or someone can write a column about futility of asking people to not to play one of your games because you have another, and apparently that game isn't doing too great so you need people to switch.

I mean.... really? Why would he say that xD He will just tilt the Ql scene and probably lose some more players. we shall see tho. I hope both of these two games get to keep a healthy playerbase. Cheers.

Besides ill will towards Tim, what would it take for you guys to start playing QC? I know there was a thread about this earlier however it could be a good idea going through it all again.

The over saturated bloom and non visible enemies is a deal breaker for me. Also I want ctf. My son likes QC better than QL because of the champs, he's only 9 though, and like his father he's no star at quake :) I like to be able to play Quake with him in a fashion we both can enjoy. I want QC to succeed. I want for Quake to survive in a new iteration for future generations.

In order of importance:
+ visibility
- queue times
+ some kind of halfway satisfying team mode. Hero mode TDM with randoms is ultra boring and I have no idea if sacrifice is any good because no one plays it. Give me CTF or (sigh) CA.
+ tolerable duel mode, I don't think I will ever enjoy this round shit. It's the same problem as the queues and 5000 loading screens, everything about this game interrupts 'flow' state.
+ performance. Unbelievable how mediocre this game runs w all low settings on my 6 month old rx480 build. I can't get any friends into the game because it doesn't run well enough to even try.
+ players

Perfect thread and enjoyable responses, just how I want them to be and expected it to be eventually, but what absolutely entertains me is how the lot of the people posting here and were defending QC at the beginning of beta are brutally trashing it now without any remorse or faith the game will develop to something proper.

You guys shouldve listened to the people who said it was doomed from the beginning and pointless to get your hopes up. No, you kept being naive and went on to waste your precious time to that atrocity and told the critics that they be pessimists and toxic naysayers. Now 10 months later you've become the thing you've rediculed not so long ago.

Now u mad and as usually, ESR is here to safe the day by providing you a platform to spew your frustration on. How typical and not ironic.

Yeah, you're enjoying yourself. You might even enjoy a game and a genre not succeeding. That's great for you, great for all masochists. I would enjoy constructive criticisms culminating in success, and there are others like that, and this site is for those who enjoy fun, spectacular games and competitions. Don't assume or enjoy the notion there are more hopeless pessimists here than somewhere else, they are, in fact, everywhere. But things and places exist because they are built by optimists who take risks for everyone else, even those who would relish in their failure.

he's not a masochist because he enjoys seeing the people that he believes are ruining something he cares for not profiting from their actions. jesus. you can want things to succeed and still also have an opinion that bad people are ruining something good, and want that venture to fail. you don't have to have some blind optimism or naive positive hope.

if somebody marries your daughter and treats her like garbage, are you going to sit there while people criticize her husband and tell them when they enjoy watching him suffer because of his bad decisions that they're all masochists and should be hoping for the best? hoping that the relationship works out?

No, it's not. I'm speaking out against a sentiment, nothing about my reply is vague, or bullshit. It is a clarifying point of intent, but the replies that are proof my reading of the sentiment is much more accurate than your elaborate soap opera.

No, it's not. I'm speaking out against a sentiment, nothing about my reply is vague, or bullshit. It is a clarifying point of intent, but the replies that are proof my reading of the sentiment is much more accurate than your elaborate soap opera.

i don't know what you're saying or talking about. what does 'clarifying a point of intent' mean? what does 'reading of the sentiment' mean? where have i provided any 'elaborate soap opera'? how is you calling this person a 'masochist' not a fabrication? how is you basing your understanding of this person's 'joy' on his 'masochism' not an extension of your fabrication? what does 'masochism' have to do with alborz's response? how do you know that i don't know alborz, and don't already understand the motivations for his feelings toward the game?

Yeah, you're enjoying yourself. You might even enjoy a game and a genre not succeeding. That's great for you, great for all masochists.

I am enjoying myself because I felt this coming for months but people were too much in denial, blinded by their hype which resulted in false hope and expectations of this game becoming a succes. I knew from the beginning when the NDA was still up that the game was doomed to fail, but people kept calling us negative and that we cling too much to the past and didn't want change and so forth, now the exact same people who are suddenly disillusioned are confirming everything me and some people were talking about. This enjoys me, not the fact that a Quake sequel has failed. I absolutely love Quake and it remains my main game.

On the contrary even, it saddens me that a Quake game is neglected in this manner. I was waiting for it since it was announced but as soon as I played it the first few hours I knew they made some critical errors which could not be reverted/changed for the game to take a step in the right direction in time. Thus I proceeded to tell people what's up but we got rediculed and even got censored.

Judging by the posts I've seen around this place the last couple of months I can conclude that 90% of the people who kept giving it a chance hated the game. I've seen countless posts of people saying they weren't happy about x y and z and let those equations just be the things that are fundemental to a Quake games' succes (Visibility, netcode, engine, sound, matchmaking, loading time). The people that kept playing weren't dumb and secretly they knew it had no point to keep playing, but they did anyway just for the sake of the franchise or tournament money.

I on the other hand knew the history of development and the current state of idsoftware (just look @ how they handled QL) and judging from the first couple of weeks, I was confident that letting this game go was the best choice to make.

So to TL;DR this:

The people who kept playing are the masochists. They continued playing something they hate, while getting dissapointment after dissapointment. Finally a lot of them realized that it's pointless and are echoing the stuff me and others were stating months ago. This entertains me, and I'm sure as hell it entertains you too, since you moderate this place. No need to assume I'm enjoying Quake's failure, I'm just enjoying the irony of how things developed as I expected them to and the vain thought that I wasn't wrong.

Yeah, and anybody who had an even rough idea of the variables, meaning the reality of what determines game success in 2017, as well as id software's decision making and treatment of the quake franchise in the last few years should have come to a conclusion which predicted things to turn out roughly the way they did actually turn out, assuming a cold, uninvolved but ultimately rational mindset. Virtually most of the high-level management issues plaguing Quake Champions are and have been the standard modus operandi of id software in recent times, and there is not and has never been any indication that any of it would or will ever change.

Formulated differently, you had to literally deny history/reality to arrive at anything but what you would probably call the "pessimist vision", which is of course the one that turned out to be true, because it was actually grounded in the real world, did not ignore past experiences and did not expect the people responsible at id software
1. to suddenly become Quake aficionados as well as masters of game design and project management
2. to create a vision of what Quake is, what makes it essential and how to bring this franchise into the 21st century, and
3. to then successfully implement that vision.
No, the "pessimist" vision was to expect them to develop a game that would probably be heavily inspired by Q3, might have a few interesting and nice aspects or gimmicks, but would ultimately be mediocre and mismanaged (or rather mediocre because mismanaged). The precise nature of the mediocreness (have the game be made by literal Halo developers, ending up basically a decently looking but technically shitty Q3 incorporating some fads of contemporary casual shooters, sprinkled with throwbacks to earlier titles which 90% of the modern audience have never played or heard of) and mismanagement (making decisions which indicate they have no clue whether this is supposed to be a casual or competitive game, but organizing big competitive tournaments anyway even though there's zero indication this makes the game any more successful) could not have been called beforehand, but their magnitude and general characteristics are roughly in the ballpark of what the community is or should be used to by now from id software.

This is not to bash on the people who actually hoped this would turn out a successful game. I see where they are coming from, because there's probably no group of people in the world (including anybody at id software) that wanted to see this succeed more than the playerbase of the old titles (QL included), the people who have played the entries in the franchise continuously for literal decades now because they love the game and despite the treatment by id software. What I argue is that fundamentally, this optimism was deeply irrational and probably grew out of the love for the game and a subsequent glorification of id, making them bigger than they really are.

What you're talking about is really 'realism', and I can go into detailed arguments on what the probability might be, but overall, there are just too many variables in a big project like this, and too many opportunities for successful execution and niche success. It is entirely important to not define success as some sort of mass popularity or x10 returns on investment. Anyway, you are oversimplifying and strawman-ing here with some predictions that you in particular can be certain about. Sure, no one can argue with you about your vision of success and how to get there.

Ignoring all that, even if rationally, it is obvious a project is doomed, and I was in the 50/50 camp, there are different courses of action and attitude.

My point is that those who take risks and try should get some credit for trying. Even if they fail. Those who tear a project down, even before avenues for corrections and improvements can even be evaluated, are assholes.

What r you talking about. Everyone waited for this game. I remember the first comments.

It is entirely important to not define success as some sort of mass popularity or x10 returns on investment.

tell that to tim. He will be most receptive.

My point is that those who take risks and try should get some credit for trying. Even if they fail. Those who tear a project down, even before avenues for corrections and improvements can even be evaluated, are assholes.

they should get a credit.. The credit of criticism. Thats why if you don't try to reach for better, you are a loser in dre's mind. I really understand what you are trying to say here but man. This is not it. We can go point by point but the reality of the situation that a big chunk of people argued that for various reasons this isn't gona go nowhere and they were right. You don't seem to realize that me and everyone here that criticized the game for the sole reason that we care passionately. When I got second best grades in school my mother always said that thats not enough why are you not the best dre. Dre you dont learn enough you watch porn on pc. She criticized me because she wanted and expected the best from me. I never said to her mum you are a hater. You see?

In all seriousness though ESR have all the right to be upset. Hell, I've gotten myself a new 144/1440/FS display on par with some nice GPU not specifically for Willits' new playground but still hoping to play in the forthcoming months. Yet I can't.

Oh, the FPS issue has actually been fixed (somewhat). It's just that you can't configure crosshair properly, for one, and thus can't see it neatly in 1440p (even worse when you try extrapolating from 1080p). And that's just one of the issues.

I mean, we could configure and tune - not even mentioning the netcode - all of the basic needs in Q3. The vanilla Q3.

where do you see me being upset about nasty stuff being said about [id]? i'm not upset, nor did I say anything about id. i simply called certain attitude self-defeating and contrary to my interests, as a gamer and as a spectator, and to everyone like me in that regard.

In fact, I've been saying this every time a new game is released and is being developed, as I've seen this shit turn game after game away from ESReality. It's not like calling assholes assholes does anything, but it's a tiny bit cathartic.

Demiurge, it's pointless trying to have a debate about any topic here because if it doesn't sit well with their realistic standards about how success is measured, which is incredibly subjective as well, you'd be better off talking to a brick wall mate.

I have trouble coming up with ideas of what success would be which seem appropriate and were actually fulfilled in this game. Let's do a brainstorming, and think about some possible candidates of criteria for success, whether they seem appropriate (purely my opinions here) and whether they have any relevance for the project's current state [see comments in brackets]. This is basically a rundown of "well if the game doesn't have desirable property X, is it at least Y?".Is it fair to call the QC project successful if?
* it has, let's say, a 5-digit number of players at its daily peak, i.e. >10000, which is what I consider to be the minimum value for a healthy playerbase (or 60% of that, or whatever)? That would be around 20% more than Counterstrike Source has, a game which came out in November 2004, and about a third of SC2, a game from 2010. Considering how Quake is one of the most influential and important FPS franchises of all time, this would seem apt for a new entry. I think that having people who actually play the game is kinda important for a multiplayer title, but Demiurge and you seem to think otherwise, so let's accommodate and say this does not matter for success. [Ofc, this criteria is quite blatantly not fulfilled, and probably never will be.]
* it is a good game that emphasizes on the qualities of the old titles and is liked by the people who like these kind of games? Again, this would seem kind of important to me, especially if the game's basically dead. Hey, we have to arrange games via IRC just like we have to for all the other Arena FPSs, but at least it is a fine title able to hold up a candle to the other games in the franchise and subgenre, and definitely better than QL regarding the things we care about, right? [I would put a big fucking question mark behind the statement that QC is as good an AFPS as let's say QL or Reflex or Warsow, and that's being generous. I can't make a definitive statement whether the community at large actually likes it.]
* it is clearly a product of creativity, passion and hard work, made by people who love Quake? Like, if it's dead on arrival, isn't liked by the people who like AFPSs, well, do at least the people who actually made it give a fuck about their work and tried to make a really good fucking game? Frankly, for a game that has a healthy population and is loved by its players, I don't think this is a particularly important criteria. [Ye, I'm sure the Halo Developers at saber really have a passion for Quake gameplay in the way we do, lol. Regarding id, Willits/Syncerror probably can't do b2r because they can't be arsed to play enough of the game to learn it.]
* it is profitable? Ultimately, id software is of course an enterprise and as such its objective is to generate income by producing goods/services and exchanging them against currency on a market. Purely from the player perspective, I don't think this is important, or only to the extent that it ensures the continuing survival of the game. For id software and Bethesda, profitability is of course paramount. [This is one of the conditions where we legitimately cannot know whether it will be fulfilled at some point in the future. What seems pretty clear to me though is that the income so far has in no way covered the expenses. (According to steamspy.com, the game has over 200'000 owners. Most of them probably signed up back in the free beta and did thus not generate any income. I estimate expenses so far to be somewhere between 4-10M$, though I really have no clue)]
* it provided a valuable experience and taught important lessons to the people behind it? If it failed in the other criteria so far, I would hesitate to still call the game a success if just this was true, but at least maybe it would give hope that something better may come eventually. [This is where we have to take id's history, particularly with QL, into account. FWIW, they don't seem to learn from their mistakes (or their successes).]
* the project offered a platform for high-quality competitive play by professionals, with action-packed well-executed tournament events for the Quake fanbase to watch, featuring all the pros we know and love? I quite frankly don't see why that would matter all that much, and therefore having a one-million-dollar tournament does not shift my perception of QC into that of a great successful project. [Hey, this one is actually more or less true. Compared with the rest of the game, the tournaments so far have been pretty decent (with a small question mark behind "high-quality gameplay"). Of course this phenomenon will stop the instant that bethesda/id decides to not provide major prizepools anymore, because that's simply what happens once you stop an artificial unprofitable moneyflux into a dead and bad game nobody, not even the pros, likes to play.]
* the project was managed decently enough that the people behind it can still derive income from their waged labour at id software? I... frankly don't care, but for Tim and Sync and whoever else involved this is of course paramount. They don't want to get fired. [I doubt there will be any meaningful consequences for basically producing a game that has a lower playerbase in beta as its predecessor has 8 years after release. So for all that they care, success!]

I'm getting tired of this, but I think you get the general gist, which is that you have to have a pretty weird and far-reaching idea of success to consider QC to be one. But feel free to explain how your subjective idea of "a successful project" looks like, and whether QC qualifies.

TL;DR If you like tournaments, Tim Willits and don't care about anything else, this game has been a massive success so far.

*is the game an improvement or at the very least on par with the previously attained levels of being 'tech' enough? Customization of player-oriented options, competetive visual features, netcode polishing, proper design of shooting mechanics, optimization and all that concludes here. This asessment is very important for Quake is a focal point of games where visual, sound, input & control aspects are competetively tuned first.

I considered this to be part of the second point, "is it a good game and Arena FPS?". Though I guess technically the game could be good while not having any of these things (see for example PUBG, which is a good game even though it's probably lacking massively in all of these things).

All of the things you mention should of course have been of uttermost importance during development, especially for a game that claims to be about competition, espurts and gets developer-sponsored one million dollar tournaments. Yet these aspects are massively neglected. Id is marketing the game like it's Reflex*, but at the very core they are making a casual shooter through and through.

* which, as a pure side remark, ironically might have seen significantly more success (i.e. players) if it came up with and implemented a vision to make AFPS fun for the 2017 casual player instead of re-implementing one of the most hardcore titles in the subgenre. Though I know they simply made the game they wanted to make, and mostly succeeded in that. Let's see what diabotical will bring.

It's quite interesting, come to think of it. Q4 was the last title with multiplayer id could've developed themselves on a large scale (QL most likely hasn't been considered as a huge project since the very beginning) yet they layed it off to Raven. QL has never really been given the attention it needed. DooM was an excellent reboot for SP part but the multiplayer has been layed off as well. QC has been completely left for the contractor to dig in.

There's an obvious trend here yet they do indeed try to ship QC as the successor to 'Quake legacy'.

Why hadn't you try to bring your legacy back when it was 12 years earlier?

Although the whole concept of QC is terribad and dated it would be a really easy fix to make it a proper game and get player numbers to 5 or even 6 figures, ... but id will never do it because they are stupid and clueless.

With what they had they at first could have taken QL, implement matchmaking, make some marketing to get fresh blood in and test if the audience stays to find out if people these days like something like Quake. Identifying the early adopter these days. Then they could have crafted a new team mode with champions, something modern objective based, to bring Quake into the new century. They could have used the community to test and improve this thing, holding regular sunday cups with money involved, growing the scene. And if that all was there and working, create a new Quake game. Not using Saber.

Instead they kept people playing QL by releasing minimal updates. Tested dumped down game elements which were hated. Finally releasing a whole new Quake basing it on a dumped down fun mod with Champions thinking this will make Quake great again. The game lacking fundamentals in every aspect. Spending 1 million dollars in one tourney.

They spent 1 million dollars on one tourney barely anyone even heard of. If they used that money to organize weekly QL tournaments instead, 1 million would be enough to make a 20 000$ tournament every week FOR A YEAR.

That would be a pretty fucking big motivation for people to start playing QL.

1) sTPHN is a full blown racist who's trying to sell his many house niggaz as "having more black friends than anyone else on this forum".
2) Tim Willits needs our 600 players left in QL to make QC a success.

TBH I think that's not enough to fix QC. I think the problem goes way deeper than those names in particular, being Zenimax making bad decisions regarding id software and the Quake franchise.

Regarding id software, whether you like them personally or not, lets not forget those three names are only in those positions because they are the replacements of the previous guys that were in charge and who had left the company. Tim and the rest didn't get there by being promoted, but by filling suddenly open spots. A company that's bleeding top employees shows there's ingrained issues; deeper than whoever is in charge at one point in time.

To tell the whole story we already know, Willits is in charge because Carmack and Hollenshead left, Sync and Sponge have their jobs because Steve Nix left (director of Quake Live when it actually had players back in 2010 and 2011).

And then, Zenimax decided to fill those spots with people that have zero experience whatsoever on those jobs. That also shows there's something wrong with upper management. Tim, Sync and Sponge have zero experience on what they are doing right now -- and somehow are all unsupervised. No wonder they are not great at it.

Who is the one at fault, the persons doing a job they are unqualified for -as replacement for guys that suddenly left for some reason-, or the guy that put them in that job in first place? I think it's mostly the latter, and so to fix the problem both have to be taken care of. Only firing a guy or two is not going to be fruitful, if the company is going to repeat the mistake by once again designating unqualified people.

Regarding the Quake franchise, I don't think Tim+Sync are the ones that came up with the idea of making Quake Champions right now. QC was supposed to be a QL gametype, that was rushed to be an independent game. I think it was Zenimax itself, that saw the Russian ruble was heavily depreciating and just hired a Russian company (Saber Interactive) that was very cheap at the time. They didn't care Saber had a horrible reputation as a developer.

And when you think about it, the main problems with QC are the technical issues (so Saber) and the design not being polished and not very much thought about (shows it was rushed).

So after all that wall of text and to stay on-topic, why do you think Tim changed his mind from "continue playing QL if you want" (some months ago) to now "stop playing QL"?. To me the answer is obvious: Tim must know Zenimax's reaction to the horrible new Quake results is going to be his head, despite him not being really responsible of the actual problems of the game. Tim&Co. are only responsible of relatively small decisions like hiring Zero4 and Mak (who have absolutely zero experience on their jobs at id software and do very little to improve the game or the casting of events -- they are just a waste of money), but not of the big decisions like hiring Saber.

Problem for us though, getting rid of Tim&Co. is not enough to fix QC, because QC needs a complete rework both as a game and especially as a project. FPS and visibility are not going to improve as long as Saber is in charge, and the game's blandness/nothingness other than being some random shooter is something that can only be improved upon by remaking most of the assets.

Quake's faith really is in Zenimax's hands rather than Tim's. I mean, Tim could maybe be out tomorrow.... but what if Zenimax replaces him with Syncerror? Or what if they actually pick a good replacement, but Saber is still in charge of the technical side?

edit: To answer a question nobody has asked but to make a more coherent post, I think something radical is going to happen both with id software (like Tim possibly leaving, as posted) and also with QC itself. QC has tanked way too much for the amount spent. For example, I was thinking id could just shut down QL as a desperate measure to force people to play QC, or change the QC business model to not lock champions and be actually F2P (what Lawbreakers should have done long ago)..

I think a good portion of those viewers are from OverBang though because in all honesty and it's probably just me but Quake Champions just doesn't seem like a very fun game to watch on stream, unless the commentary is either really in depth, which I know Rapha does often, or if it's funny etc.